Cannon urges tough Chinese stance on Iran

Canada's foreign ministercalled onChina on Thursday to take a tougher stance on Iran's nuclear ambitions.

TheChinese "need to step up to the plate," Lawrence Cannon told The Canadian Press. "China, of course, is a very highly regarded partner with Iran."

China has been reluctant over the past few weeks to go along with calls from Western governments for new sanctions against Iran.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejadsaid earlier Thursday that his country has produced its first batch of a higher grade of enriched uranium, two days after the Islamic republic began the process.

Ahmadinejadtold hundreds of thousands of Iranians celebrating the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution that the country is now a "nuclear state," but he insisted Iran has no intention of building atomicweapons.

Cannon called on Iran to end its uranium enrichment and open up its nuclear program to United Nations inspectors.

"We're deeply disappointed with Iran's attitude," he said.

Cannon expects the issue of Iran's nuclear ambitions will be the focus of a March meeting of G8 foreign ministers in Gatineau, Que.

Speaking in Vancouver, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he had spoken earlier with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin about the Iranian nuclear program.

Harper said Iran's enrichment program has to cease, adding the Iranian regime poses a "grave danger."

The prime minister said the international community must take co-ordinated action.

International observers said the latest announcement from Iran is intended as much to quell dissent domestically as it is to exert the country's independence internationally.

"He wants to tell his people they are at the front of the technical achievements, 'we are achieving every month a new thing support us,'" said Israeli intelligence expert Ephraim Kam.

While government supporters rallied in central Tehran on Thursday to mark the anniversary of the revolution, Iranian security forces moved across the capital city to break up counter-protests, opposition websites reported. More than 1,000 arrests werereported.

Opposition protests targeted

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's granddaughter and her husbandwere the most high-profile opposition members arrested Thursday, according to the pro-reform Rahesabz website. Khomeini was the architect of the revolution.

Zahra Eshraghi and her husband, Mohammad Reza Khatami, the brother of a former president, were in custodyfor an hour, according to the report, which could not be independently confirmed.

Dozens ofmilitia memberswith batons and pepper spray attacked the convoy of senior opposition leader Mahdi Karroubi, smashing his car windows and forcing him to turn back as he tried to join the protests, his son, Hossein Karroubi, told The Associated Press.

Opposition protesters numbered in the hundreds, according to reports, far fewer than the thousands that came out to protest after the presidential election last summer.

Ahmadinejad used his nationally televised address to say his country would not be bullied into curtailingthe nuclear program.

"I want to announce with a loud voice here that the first package of 20 per cent fuel was produced and provided to the scientists," he said, referring to the recently begun process of enriching Iran's uranium stockpile to higher levels.

Iran had announced Monday that it would be enriching its uranium stockpile to 20 per cent levels, which prompted Western leaders to threaten sanctions against Iran if the country doesn't comply with an International Atomic Energy Agency plan that would see Iran's uranium shipped abroad for enriching.

Westfears Iranian bomb

The United States and its allies have accused Iran of attempting to use its civilian nuclear program as a cover to build nuclear weapons, concerns fuelledbysecrecy surroundingIran's construction of a second underground enrichment facility and Ahmadinejad's frequent anti-Israel rhetoric.

Tehran insists itwishes only to use its nuclear program for generating electricity andproducing nuclear material for use in medicine.

France and the United States have said that Iran's actions have left no choice but for them to push for a fourth set of UN Security Council sanctions against Iran.